Waning era of the middle-class factory job

"Some say we're looking for a bailout. Baloney," Mr. Wagoner wrote. He conceded that many of GM's problems the company must face on its own. But "what we want ... is the chance to compete on a level playing field."

No city symbolized GM's past prosperity - accounting for more than half of the US car market in the years after World War II - like Flint.

And no region is more loyal to "made in the USA," at least when it comes to cars.

It's possible to drive the 80-odd miles from Detroit to Flint without seeing a single foreign nameplate on the road.

But Flint's population has declined since 1980, and its prized jobs have been steadily disappearing. GM plans to stop production at an engine facility, one of its several remaining plants here, in 2008 as part of a recently announced downsizing.

Delphi used to have two huge complexes here. Now, just one remains, and two of its seven plants have closed.

The next steps, as the partsmaker navigates bankruptcy, appear likely to include layoffs, wage cuts, and possibly the elimination of pensions for future retirees.

For the Aremia-Van Alst family, it is a time of tough lessons. "I can only hope and pray," says Mary. But she and Neil are also thinking ahead to a possible future without Delphi paychecks from the plant where they work on fuel-tank parts.

Mary says she may try to finish a degree in business management. Neil says he could do carpentry work. And both say they might train to be school teachers. In the meantime, they are trying to make sure their five children stick to the straight and narrow in their own education.

When one son got a few Ds last year, Neil says he hammered home this point: "If you don't go to college you're not going to be able to afford an apartment, let alone a vehicle."

Their oldest daughter, ninth-grader Rachel, has a clear sense of the challenges the family faces. "I want to keep my grades up," she says. She hopes for a career in healthcare, and hopes her parents can keep their jobs and house.

This isn't the first time the auto industry has been through wrenching transition, thanks to rising foreign competition. And lots of unionized companies, from the steel industry to airlines, have been down the bankruptcy road before Delphi.

In many cases, the economy's vaunted flexibility has helped displaced workers find new jobs, but typically at lower pay than before. That's what has happened with legions of US steel workers since the 1970s, when that industry declined.

Jared Bernstein, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, says that the typical layoff results in a 10 to 20 percent pay cut for the workers involved. And US manufacturing, long a foothold of working-class prosperity, has been hit particularly hard. "We are losing that foothold at a very rapid pace," he says.

In some ways, the auto workers are a victim of their own past success. As the industry rose, Henry Ford was once able to double worker wages.

Today, hourly manufacturing pay in Flint remains extraordinarily high, $31 an hour - nearly twice the national average.

But fewer have those jobs today. Per capita incomes in this city have fallen below the US norm, and could fall further still as the auto industry goes through its next phase of cuts.

A coming restructuring plan at Ford Motor Co. will match GM in job cuts, eliminating 30,000 positions within five years, according to a report in Wednesday's Detroit News that cited people familiar with the plan.Delphi CEO Robert S. "Steve" Miller has said drastic action is needed for domestic industry to remain competitive.

That may be. But Neil Van Alst says the industry should survive by creativity, as well as cutbacks.

"Step up and create more innovation," he says. "That's what started all of these plants to begin with."

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